From Oct. 17-20, the International Commission on Nuclear Non-proliferation and Disarmament (ICNND) will meet in Hiroshima. Let's use the occasion to send a powerful message and build momentum towards the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) Review Conference in May 2010.

The nuclear abolition movement is at a defining moment. For all its limitations, President Obama’s Prague speech has given us a historic opportunity. Hibakusha wept when President Obama said,“the United States has a moral responsibility to act.”But while the world prepared to embark on a journey towards a "world without nuclear weapons", the former Japanese government remained fixated on nuclear deterrence. Now that a new government has come to power in Tokyo, we have a unique opportunity to change this.

Haruko is Co-Director of Hiroshima Alliance for Nuclear WeaponsAbolition (HANWA). She is Executive Director of NO DU Hiroshima Project and a Steering Committee member of the International Coalition to Ban Uranium Weapons (ICBUW). She is a long-time activist in the Hiroshima movement for nuclear abolition and peace. In 2003 she went with a study team from Hiroshima to Baghdad, Basra and other places throughout Iraq to study the devastation caused by war and the
radiological contamination from depleted uranium weapons.

Akira Kawasaki

Akira is an Executive Committee Member of Peace Boat and a member of the Abolition 2000 Coordinating Committee. He is also Coordinator of the Global Partnership for the Prevention of Armed Conflict (GPPAC) North- East Asia Regional Secretariat. Since 2005 he has coordinated the disarmament section of the Public Forum on UN Reform, co-sponsored by NGOs and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Along with Tilman Ruff, he is one of two NGO advisors to ICNND Co-Chairs Gareth Evans and Yoriko Kawaguchi.

Exposed to the atomic bomb in Nagasaki on August 9, 1945, in an instant Terumi lost five members of his family. He was a researcher and teacher in the engineering department of Tohoku University from 1960 to 1996 and became involved in the hibakusha movement in 1974. He has been Secretary General of Nihon Hidankyo since 2000. Since giving testimony at the UN First Special Session on Disarmament in 1978, he has witnessed to the horror of nuclear weapons all over the world. Hidankyo hosted the atomic bomb exhibition at the UN headquarters in New York

Tilman Ruff

Tilman Ruff is the immediate past president of the Medical Association for Prevention of War (Australia), member of the Board of Directors of International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War (IPPNW) and Australian Management Committee chair, International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN). He served on the official Australian delegation to the NPT PrepCom in New York in May this year. Along with Akira Kawasaki, he is one of two NGO advisors to ICNND Co-Chairs Gareth Evans and Yoriko Kawaguchi.

Rebecca Johnson

Rebecca Johnson is the founding Director of the Acronym Institute for Disarmament Diplomacy. She is a former Vice Chair of the Board of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists and from 2004 to 2006 was senior advisor to the Weapons of Mass Destruction Commission chaired by Hans Blix. Dr Johnson co-founded the Aldermaston Women’s Camp(aign) in 1985, extending the resistance to US and Soviet nuclear weapons to the UK nuclear programme and Trident. She is a member of Women in Black, the International Institute for Strategic Studies and the Faslane 365 Steering Group. Dr Johnson has edited Disarmament Diplomacy since 2004.

About ICNND

The International Commission on Nuclear Non- proliferation and Disarmament (ICNND) was launched as a Japan-Australia jointly-led initiative on proposal by the Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd in 2008. The Commission is jointly chaired by Gareth Evans (former Australian Foreign Minister) and Kawaguchi Yoriko (former Japanese Foreign Minister), and including them has 15 Commissioners appointed from 15 nations,and 27 Advisors. Looking towards the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty (NPT) Review Conference in May 2010, the Commission held its first meeting in Sydney in October 2008, its second in Washington D.C. in February and its third in Moscow in June this year. Its fourth meeting will be held in Hiroshima from October 17-20. The Commission plans to present its report in January 2010.

About ICNND Japan NGO Network

The International Commission on Nuclear Non-proliferation and Disarmament (ICNND) Japan NGO Network was launched in Tokyo on January 25,2009, with the goals of making recommendationsto the ICNND and expanding the participation of civil society.

(Many thanks to Sam Dreskin in Kyoto for creating the Japanese/English flyer!!)